The first Black woman to become a federal judge, Constance Baker Motley, was a trailblazer in the civil rights movement. Born Constance Juanita Baker on September 14, 1921 in New Haven, Connecticut, she was the ninth of 12 children. Her parents immigrated to the United States from the Caribbean island of Nevis. They were skilled workers who enjoyed a comfortable lifestyle. When they moved to the U.S., their financial and social statuses changed. Although she dreamed about going to college, her family had no money for that. As a student, she studied W.E.B. DuBois, James Weldon Johnson, and Jane M. Bolin, which inspired her interest in Black history. Constance wanted something different for herself. She believed that her path to a more "elevated" life was through education.
Unlike African-American students who lived in segregated communities, Constance attended integrated schools in New Haven, Connecticut and thrived. She grew up in a working class family and distinguished herself as a brilliant student in secondary school. Wanting to attend college but lacking funds, Constance Motley was lowered to working as a struggling housekeeper after high school. She met a minister who taught classes in Black history that focused her attention on civil rights and the underrepresentation of Black lawyers. While in high school, Motley became president of the New Haven Negro Youth Council. She was secretary of the New Haven Adult Community Council and the Dixwell Community Center. The writing, public policy, and advocacy work she did with these groups would serve her throughout her life. In 1939, she graduated with honors from Hillhouse High School, regarded as one of the country’s best schools.
Activists such as Mary McLeod Bethune and Dorothy Height, influenced Constance to learn compassion for the poor, to become politically oriented, and to identify with the plight of Black America. After high she worked in a youth opportunity job, and served as president of the New Haven Negro Youth Council, which she helped to organize. When she was 18, Motley made a speech at local African-American social center that was heard by Clarence W. Blakeslee, a White businessman and philanthropist who sponsored the center. He was so impressed after hearing her speak that he agreed to fund her education. Thrilled with the opportunity, Constance chose Fisk University in Tennessee, but was unprepared for the Jim Crow South. After less than two years, Constance Baker transferred to New York University in 1942. New York City felt more similar to New Haven. She lived in Harlem, and immersed herself in the community and its Black culture.
An exceptional student, Constance was invited to join NYU’s prestigious pre-law honor society, Justinian. She graduated with honors with a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and a minor in government in 1943, becoming the second Black woman to graduate from Columbia Law School. Despite her many friendships, Constance found Columbia an experience to tolerate rather than enjoy. Numerous female students reported they did not find the Columbia Law School atmosphere to be accepting. Many of the professors felt the women didn’t belong, especially women of color. Constance enrolled in Columbia Law School the following year. Enrollment was significantly down due to the number of men serving in the war, so Columbia admitted a larger number of women. During law school, Constance met Joel Wilson Motley, Jr., a real estate and insurance broker, who eventually became a partner at a successful Harlem firm. After dating for a year, the couple married shortly after she received her Bachelor of Laws on August 18, 1946. They remained married for 59 years.
Her interest in civil rights led her to join the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), after she was denied admission to a public beach and skating rink. Constance found Columbia an experience to tolerate rather than enjoy. Many of the professors felt the women didn’t belong, especially women of color. Numerous female students reported they did not find the Columbia Law School atmosphere to be accepting. While still a law student at Columbia, Thurgood Marshall hired her as a clerk with the Legal Defense Fund. After completing law school, and receiving her degree in 1946, Motley continued her work with the NAACP and collaborated with Marshall, Walter White, and other NAACP luminaries as they fashioned the legal program to make a frontal attack on segregation. She was the first Black woman to attend the Columbia University School of Law and received her law degree there in 1946.
From 1945 to 1964, Motley worked on all of the major school desegregation cases brought by LDF. She noted that the national NAACP lawyers had become experts in segregation cases and they would assist local lawyers with writing briefs and making the necessary constitutional arguments. One of the first cases that Motley worked on was Sweatt v. Painter, in which the LDF succeeded in gaining the admission of Herman Sweatt to the University of Texas. The Court ultimately ruled that the state was constitutionally obligated to provide Sweatt with equal educational opportunities, thereby highlighting the inherent inequality in segregated educational institutions. She represented Ada Sipuel in her successful attempt to attend Oklahoma's law school and Professor G.W. McLauren in his successful attempt to escape the internal segregation at the Graduate School of Education of the University of Oklahoma.
In 1954, she wrote the first legal brief in the groundbreaking Brown v. the Board of Education case. The birth of her son in 1952 interrupted her work, but after only three months of leave, she returned to researching and drafting briefs for the case. She also drafted the model complaint that explained how segregation violated the Constitution that numerous attorneys copied with great success. When the Court handed down its unanimous decision declaring segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Constance shared the same joy as the other attorneys who had worked tirelessly on the case. Although, she did not receive the same credit. Her involvement in Brown paved the way for several successful challenges to segregation in numerous public universities. The NAACP promoted her to lead counsel and continued to assign her significant civil rights cases. Three years later, Motley successfully litigated an equally significant case in Little Rock, Arkansas, after protesters spat on nine African American teenagers and physically prevented them from enrollment at the previously all-White Central High School.
Then, in 1962, Motley represented dozens of young people (known as the Freedom Riders) who integrated public transportation by defying violent protests to ride buses deep into the former Confederacy. She played a pivotal role in the litigation that resulted in the admission of Hamilton Holmes and Charlayne Hunter to the University of Georgia. After two years of legal battles a U.S. District Court judge, issued his ruling on January 6, 1961, stating that the “plaintiffs are qualified for and entitled to immediate enrollment at the University of Georgia”. Thus Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes became the first Black students in the school’s history. The following year, she represented James Meredith, a Black student denied admission to “Ole Miss,” the University of Mississippi. The Supreme Court upheld the Fifth Circuit’s ruling. Though it took several attempts, and the assistance of the National Guard, Meredith eventually graduated from the University.
She also was vital in the enrollment of African Americans Vivian Malone and James Hood to the University of Alabama, and Harvey Gantt to Clemson College in South Carolina. Constance’s victory in the Meredith case led her to win similar desegregation cases at the university level in Florida, Oklahoma, Georgia, and South Carolina and helped put an end to massive resistance in the Deep South. Always a staunch supporter of civil rights, Motley represented Martin Luther King Jr. in several legal cases. She defended him in 1963 after he was arrested in Birmingham, Alabama. She sang freedom songs in churches that had been bombed, and spent a night under armed guard with Medgar Evers, the civil rights leader who was later murdered. Motley claimed her greatest professional achievement was the reinstatement of 1,100 Black children in Birmingham who had been expelled for taking part in street demonstrations in the spring of 1963.
Motley faced the danger of her work head-on — from driving through Ku Klux Klan territory to defend the right of Black students to attend the University of Georgia. In February 1964, Constance Motley's high-level civil rights profile drew her into politics. A Democratic State Senate candidate from the Upper West Side was ruled off the ballot because of an election-law technicality. She accepted the nomination on the condition that it would not interfere with her N.A.A.C.P. work and handily defeated a Republican to become the first Black woman elected to the State Senate. She was re-elected that November to the 175th New York State Legislature. Following in Senator Motley’s footsteps, Shirley Chisholm won election to the New York State assembly the next year. Constance remained in the job until February 1965, when she was chosen by unanimous vote of the City Council to fill a one-year vacancy as Manhattan borough president.
In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Constance Motley as a judge on the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. This was at the urging of Senator Robert F. Kennedy of New York, a Democrat, and with the support of Senator Jacob K. Javits, a Republican. The opposition of Southern senators like James O. Eastland, a Mississippi Democrat, was beaten back. Senator Eastland did his best to slow her confirmation, even accusing her of being a communist. Her appointment was officially confirmed on August 30, 1966, making her the first Black woman to serve as a United States District Judge. As the first female federal judge and a woman of color, Constance knew she faced additional scrutiny and skepticism. Judge Constance Baker Motley would prove to be a hard-working, intelligent, and fair jurist. She served as Chief Judge from 1982 to 1986. She assumed senior status on September 30, 1986.
Motley ruled against the plaintiff in the case of Mullarkey v. Borglum in 1970. This case involved female tenants in New York City arguing that their male landlord was violating their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The defendants cited the landlord's overreach of power but failed to detail the landlord's legal failings. Motley ruled in favor of the defendant, rejecting the plaintiffs' claim of sex discrimination and going against her former advocacy for tenants during her time in the New York State Senate. Motley handed down a breakthrough decision for women in sports broadcasting in 1978, when she ruled that a female reporter must be allowed into a Major League Baseball locker room. Motley saw the case as a denial of equal access to female journalists.
Over the 20-year period during which she served as a staff member and associate counsel, she won nine civil rights victories in cases she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court. She assisted on nearly 60 cases. Motley was the first African American woman to argue a case in front of the United States Supreme Court. Throughout her time on the bench, Constance was sensitive to her role as a federal judge and endeavored to enforce the rule of law and uphold the Constitution. Faced with gender discrimination in the courtroom, Motley built a career fighting for civil rights and social justice in transportation, public housing, and education. She has received the Presidential Citizens Medal, the Spingarn Medal from the NAACP, and Motley posthumously received the Congressional Gold Medal from Congress for all of her accomplishments during her lifetime. Judge Constance Baker Motley died of congestive heart failure in September of 2005, at the age of 84. Constance Baker Motley’s tireless efforts during her 19-year career with the LDF earned her the nickname, “Civil Rights Queen”.